"Green Onions", "The Locomotion", "The Wanderer" - 1960s pop music was great before The Beatles

We all know that the period between the end of rock and roll’s initial wild-man era – 1956 - 1958 – and the 1964 British Invasion of the US pop charts represented a dreary wasteland of safe, manufactured, talentless teen idols and tepid, gutless singles: the Music Industry, frightened by the wildfire spread of the raucous, lust-drenched yowlings of sexually-deranged young white and black Southerners had regained control by imprisoning Chuck Berry for transporting a minor across state lines, exposing Jerry Lee Lewis’s marriage to his 13-year old cousin, and tucking Elvis safely away in the army for a couple of years. 

But the facts suggest this analysis is at least partially flawed. I’ve been studying the list of America’s Top 100 records for that year and the quality – and the rawness - is simply stunning. The only real change I can see from comparisons with, say,  1957 and 1958 is that there are that there are more black hits in 1961, as opposed to whitebread cover versions.

Let’s start with the white folk, and, yes the rawness count is down from earlier years – the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent are notably absent. But Elvis – apart from inflicting “Surrender” and the abysmal “Are You Lonesome Tonight” on us - managed to produce “Little Sister”, one of the greatest raw rock and roll records ever made. There’s Dion’s hard-edged doowop classic,“Runaround Sue”, Del Shannon’s haunting “Runaway” (the record that launched a million fairground rides), and Ricky Nelson’s rockabilly classic “Hello, Mary Lou”:

As always, a lot of white artists produced wet drivel for 11-year old girls – there’s way too much Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vee, Pat Boone, Johnny Tillotson and Connie Francis – but there’s also a clutch of classic ballads and instrumentals, including Roy Orbison’s “Crying” and “Running Scared”, Patsy Cline’s “I Fall To Pieces”, Nashville piano king Floyd Cramer’s lovely “On The Rebound”,  Elvis’s gorgeous“His Latest Flame”, Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back”, Jimmy Dean’s brilliant story-song, “Big Bad John” (I knew every word of it back then), and Don Gibson’s classic country hit, “Sea of Heartbreak”. 

But it’s the records by black artists that stand out. You want raw, heartfelt rootsy stuff or infectious mid-tempo classics? There’s Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’”  (one of the loudest records ever made), Gary US Bond’s deranged“Quarter To Three” (surely the clumsiest production of all time, and all the better for it),  Ray Charles’s “Hit The Road Jack”, The Marcels’ eccentric “Blue Moon” (“Bom-bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-bom, bo-bom-ba-bom-bom, ba-dang-ga-dang-dang, ga-ding-ga-dong-ding Blue Moon…”) Ike and Tina Turner’s“It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again”, Ernie K. Doe’s New Orleans classic, “Mother-in-Law”, and, from the same city, Chris Kenner’s booze-soaked “I Like It Like That”.

As for ballads, 1961 saw the release of Ben E. King’s shiver-inducing “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand By Me”, The Shirelles “Dedicated to the One I Love” and“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”, and Timi Yuro’s “Hurt” (who sounds like a black man, but is actually a white woman - incredible voice).

And there was so much more: Sandy Nelson’s oddly minatory “Let There Be Drums”, the start of Motown with The Miracles “Shop Around”, The Marvelettes’ “Please, Mr. Postman” (later covered by The Beatles), The Tokens’“Lion Sleeps Tonight” and Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya”. Meanwhile the UK chipped in with John Leyton’s “Johnny Remember Me” and The Shadows’ mighty “FBI”. It’s hard to imagine any list from 1980 onwards producing anywhere near that sort of depth of quality.

And in case there’s a suspicion that I’ve deliberately chosen the best of the “lost” years when we were supposed to be twiddling our thumbs waiting for The Beatles and The Stones to save us all from mediocrity, here’s a preview of just ten hits from 1962:  “The Wanderer”, Dion; “Duke of Earl”, Gene Chandler, “The Loco-Motion”, Little Eva; “Hey! Baby”, Bruce Channel (The Beatles pinched the harmonica idea for their first single), “Palisades Park”, Freddie Cannon; “Twistin’ The Night Away”, Sam Cooke; “She Cried”, Jay & The Americans; “Twist and Shout”, The Isley Brothers (another classic subsequently covered by the Fab Four), “Green Onions”, Booker T. & The MGs; “Surfin’ Safari”, The Beach Boys.

And all of the records mentioned above were big national US hits - there’s tons of great stuff that never made it out of the regions or specialist charts.

Some wasteland! Given how many of these songs The Beatles covered, I'm sure they'd have agreed.